The Silk Road Adventure

In order that nobody in Britain ever asks the question, ‘Why don’t we have more celebrity travelogues on the telly?’ ITV have made ‘Joanna Lumley’s Silk Road Adventure’ (Wednesday, 9.00pm).

Putting the celebrity’s name above the title is one way of implying that the audience would have no interest in the subject matter unless it was presented by someone they would happily watch leafing through samples of anaglypta wallpaper for an hour, and coaxing someone, surely destined to become the UK’s next ‘National Treasure’, out of Belgravia and off on an all expenses paid trip around Asia is something of a masterstroke in ratings awareness.

In episode one, Joanna whispers her way around Venice in a variety of stylish outfits, all utterly suitable for whatever activity she happens to be filming. An outfit for travelling on a Gondola, another for learning how silk is woven, another for walking past a chip shop and yet another for pointing at some stones and saying, ’gosh’.

During the ad-break, Ms. Lumley had changed outfits and had been transported some 600 miles from the start of the Roman road in Albania to Istanbul. Here she travelled by ferry down the mighty Bosphorus in a completely different outfit, one which was suitable for meeting an insanely rich woman and shown around her £100 million waterfront abode. Joanna apologised for not changing out of her ‘ferry’ outfit and proceeded to gasp at the riches contained in the house, built by the fortune accumulated from generations of private banking with a little oil, cement and textile production thrown in. She expressed amazement at the fact that house had an underground swimming pool and said ‘gosh’ again when she found out that the dinner service was made of gold. Frankly, I wouldn’t have been shocked if the woman revealed that her hobby was smashing Ming vases and had Krug champagne flushing her toilet.

It was around now that I started to wonder what I was supposed to be learning from all this exposure to unattainable riches. Apparently, being served drinks on a silver tray by an absurdly rich woman’s butler teaches one all about the benefits of trade between nations.

We were then treated to a tour around Joanna’s hotel room set in the caves of the region of Cappadocia. The stunning vistas were breathlessly described as ‘fairy-tale’ and we wondered what the rooms used to be before they were ensuite bathrooms and dressing rooms. Caves, I think, Joanna.

There was no time to visit the hotel bar as Jo had to put on her ‘visiting a monastery’ outfit and go and visit a monastery. And so, we rumbled on, breathlessly whispering along the Silk Road on Joanna Lumley’s adventure.

The thing is, she’s not really forging a solitary path through unfamiliar terrain, chancing upon diverse characters along the way and bartering for souvenirs, is she? She’s being accompanied by a huge production crew plotting her every move and a wardrobe unit requiring the support of a long line of military supply vehicles. You can almost hear the director barking instructions at the locals; ‘Can you clear this area please, Joanna needs to walk along here looking lost.’    

She’s always wanted to do this, she informed us. I’ll bet you have.

Redcar At Night

For anyone who gets snobby about watching reality soap operas, think of ‘The Mighty Redcar’ (BBC2 Thursday, 9pm) as a study in social mobility and it works fine, apart from the slightly uncomfortable feeling that you are admiring human achievement in the face of social adversity whilst, at the same time, peeking through the curtains into your dysfunctional neighbour’s garden.

Redcar is one of those bleak northern towns, made more anonymous by not even having a professional football team permanently anchored to the bottom of the football league. Described by one of its 35,000 residents as; a typical seaside town except with a massive disused steelworks on the beach, it maybe drab, but it’s far from featureless.

The same can be said of the residents, at least those featured in the first episode. We chiefly met, Caitlin, James and Dylan, each of whom had a bucket-load of ambition and a teaspoon full of opportunity. Caitlin was determined to go to RADA at nine grand-a-year while her Mum was putting away a tenner a week working at a food bank, Dylan was trying to secure a record deal armed with a home recording studio and second-hand guitar and, James just wanted to graft 5-days-a-week rather than end up in prison like his Dad.

It was, Dylan who proved the most resilient. Adopted by his foster-mother after a harrowing childhood, Dylan was in all respects larger-than-life. Sporting an afro the size of a reasonably mature oak tree and a body that continued to ripple long after he had become motionless, he strode conspicuously around the town like the King of Tonga, serving in the local Weatherspoons by day and, at night, performing his home-grown rap music to an appreciative audience. We witnessed him visiting his autistic brother, still in care somewhere in Stoke, and assuring him that, should his music allow, he would set them both up in a flat together. Watching this enormous black teenager hugging his slightly-built, white, half-brother at the end of their afternoon together would have been enough to make you weep were it not for the sheer volume of positive energy that radiated from them.

James, on the other hand, projected a slightly less optimistic account of life in the town since the steelworks closed and deprived most young men of the chance of an apprenticeship. He seemed willing and able to hammer fence posts into the ground and was fairly proficient at shovelling stones into a wheelbarrow and moving them elsewhere but, for reasons that weren’t explained, he failed to be retained as a £20-a-day labourer for more than one week. This, after being denied an apprenticeship as one of 1300 applicants for 220 local jobs, seemed to conspire to push him toward a more familiar role as one of the local youths in whom the police were increasingly interested.

The Mighty Redcar managed to provoke a genuine interest in the town and its residents, be it Dylan’s infectious optimism or James’ inevitable decline, and you get the feeling that for every hard luck story there will be a more uplifting tale to follow.

It seemed as if the void left by the security of a career making steel had been filled with an insatiable ability to aspire to heights that their parents had never imagined. As Caitlin posed, self-consciously, in the 600 quid prom-frock bought by her Mum out of earnings from her three jobs, you couldn’t help feeling that, although mankind’s base instinct is ‘survival’, ‘aspiration’ runs it a close second.      

Now on-line at  http://tellybinge.co.uk/reviews/mighty-redcar-review/